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quarague
Asked: 2024-09-09 03:32:38 +0800 CST

How do I migrate my email on thunderbird to a new computer?

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I use Thunderbird on Ubuntu for emailing, emails are saved locally. I bought a new computer, installed Ubuntu and would like to transfer my email account including all the old emails to the new computer, old and new are Ubuntu with Thunderbird.

There are instructions on how to migrate, for example here although that is for windows systems. I tried to adapt that and copied everything from the xxxxxxxx.default folder which contains the profile to the new laptop. This aparently wrecks the Thunderbird installation. On starting Thunderbird, after a few seconds I get a popup that Thunderbird stops responding, offering me to either force-quit or wait. If I wait I just get the popup again after a few seconds. I deinstalled Thunderbird and tried the copying over the folder again and got the same result.

What is the proper way to migrate my emails to a new computer?

Extra info after comments: the old install is a Ubuntu 22 version with traditional APT, the new one is a Ubuntu 24 version with snap.

thunderbird

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    By default 24.04 will use a snap thunderbird package but 22.04 will use an apt package. They will store to thunderbird profiles in different locations.

    snap:

    ~/snap/thunderbird/common/.thunderbird/

    apt:

    ~/.thunderbird

    You can change this to make them identical installs as I have done as I have both 22.04 & 24.04 both installed and can swap between them but making sure both thunderbirds are the same version when doing so.

    You need to check that you have the same version of thunderbirds running on both machines. (At the very least the new PC must have a later version.)

    With no thunderbird applications running you should be able to copy the profile {num}.default data from the old {num).default to the one on the new machine effectively preserving the name of the new profile with the old data. It would be wise to backup any existing profile just-in-case you need to restore it for any reason. (The next step you missed.) You need to modify the .thunderbird/profiles.ini file, (a text file use your preferred editor. I would use vi.) to change the path to new destination path and modify the relative/absolute flag.

    Alternatively you can run thunderbird with multiple profiles and swap between them. In this case you use the following tool to create a second profile in a different location, calling it the name of your old profile. The names have to be the same during the swap but you can change it after its installed. (Note: there is only one profiles.ini in the .thunderbird in your home (apt) or snaphome (snap) directory.)

    thunderbird -Profilemanager

    Thunderbird will, by default, use the last one you selected using this tool, by default.

    Note: I run with two profiles, a default one and another that I encrypt. This is more complicated and uses bash scripts and an encryption tool to manage it.

    I hope this is of some help

    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data

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  2. You can export your config from thunderbird on the old computer, transfer it to the new one, and import it there.

    The export and import options are under the Tools menu. Here you also have an option to open the profile directory, so you can see the location and maybe copy manually if needed.

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